Declaration — TECHED OFF

We are optimistic that the digital world is a force for good that can democratise information, foster innovation and bring people together.

And we believe that there is much online that is brilliantly educational and entertaining for children.

We also believe that

The rules that apply to the real world should be applied to the digital world. This will protect the vulnerable and guarantee the growth of the sector.
Democratic states owe it to their voters to maintain their sovereignty, within a rules-based system, over the digital world as much as the real world. And that parents are the best curators of their children’s health and development, not tech companies.
Unrestricted access by children to smartphones, social media and adult content is creating a public health crisis.

The evidence of current harms is overwhelming. Research clearly demonstrates the high prevalence of children watching violent pornography, their increasing anxiety, depression and self-harm, their addiction to devices and their struggle to concentrate on schoolwork. Children’s suicide rates are going up.

This will continue to affect nearly all children, with 96% of 12-15 year olds now owning a smartphone. Even for young children aged three to four, smartphone ownership is 17% and rising.(1)

This is why we are calling for a delay on smartphones and social media until the age of 16.

On children and pornography

According to a child sexual abuse expert, "They see porn at school, in the corridors, in the bathrooms, on the bus... one video leads to another. If you can imagine it, it exists as porn, and children are seeing it.” (2)

A recent report by the children's commissioner found that:

By age nine, 10% of children have seen pornography online. By age 11 it’s 27%(3)
79% of children have encountered violent pornography before the age of 18.
Frequent users of pornography are more likely to engage in physically aggressive sex acts.

This is now fuelling sexual violence, as recent police data shows: (4)

Children are now ‘biggest perpetrators of sexual abuse against children.’
The NPCC said 52% of alleged offenders were children, compared with around one third a decade ago.
Last year, police received reports of 14,800 rapes and sexual assaults against children aged 10 to 17 where the suspect was a child.

Ian Critchley, NPCC lead for child protection thinks that this “is being exacerbated by the accessibility of violent pornography and… therefore, a perception that is [normal] behaviour... Clearly the accessibility to smartphones has just rocketed, not just in relation to 11- to 16-year-olds, but in relation to under-10s as well.”

Our children are becoming sexualised, misogynistic and violent.

They are also, increasingly, being found online by groomers. A recent NSPCC 2023 report also found that there had been an 82% rise in online grooming crimes against children in the last 5 years.(5)

How much more must our children endure before we decide to take away their smartphones?

Yes the Online Safety Law aims to tackle this with age verification, but we would argue that, because legislation lags behind technology advancements, it may struggle in practice to protect our children.

And besides, technology solutions to technology problems tend to spawn technology workarounds. Just look at VPNs (virtual private networks) – now commonly used by children to get around school WiFi blocks on social media etc.

Smartphones are shredding their mental health

Almost all children aged 12-17 use social media, which is designed to be addictive. Nine in ten have least one online profile. This is true for many younger children too.(6) We think it’s a case of cause, not correlation, that our children’s mental health has been sharply declining since 2010, when smartphones – and therefore social media – went from luxury to ubiquity.

The studies and stats suggest causation:

British teens who spend five or more hours a day on social media are at two to three times greater risk of self-harm.(7)
Rates of teen suicide have climbed steeply since 2010 in the UK and US.(8)
Those who got their first phone at a younger age were more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, feelings of aggression towards others and a sense of being detached from reality.(9)

Our children are addicted and this is big tech’s business model

“They're addicting kids and they know it,”(10) says lawyer Matthew P Bergman.

His firm is working to hold the tech giants accountable, having “noticed a number of parallels between social media and asbestos… The corporations involved brazenly tried to cover up the harms they knew were coming.”(11)

Here's founder Sean Parker admitting it. He’s talking about Facebook but his words apply to any social media platform:

“How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible. And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while… You’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors understood this consciously, and we did it anyway.”

Big tech has engineered our children’s addiction and is now profiting from it.

Smartphones are hindering children’s learning and development

Children who reported more than two hours a day of screen time got lower scores on thinking and language tests.(12)
A UN report recommended that smartphones should be banned from schools to tackle classroom disruption, improve learning and help protect children from cyberbullying.(13)
The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity. The closer the phone was to students’ awareness, the worse they performed on the tests. Even just having a phone in one’s pocket sapped students’ abilities.(14)
In Britain, an escalation of problems associated with pervasive tablet use among preschool children has been reported by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, including developmental delays in attention span, fine motor skills and dexterity, speaking, and socialisation – as well as an increase in aggressive and antisocial behaviour, obesity and tiredness.(15)

It's hardly surprising they can’t concentrate, given that children who have smartphones receive around 237 notifications a day. (16)

Parents are rightly worried

A recent survey by Parentkind (17) found that

58% of parents would support the idea of introducing a ban on smartphones for under 16s
Parents of primary school age children are “terrified” as 77% back a ban on smartphones for under 16s.
8 in 10 (83%) parents say that smartphones are harmful to children.

So what about The Online Safety Act?

Some excerpts:

“Firms must use accredited technology to identify CSEA (child sexual exploitation and abuse) content, whether communicated publicly or privately by means of the service, and to swiftly take down that content.”

How quickly is swiftly? And does this put the onus on the victim or the viewer to report once content has already been disseminated, or once a groomer has contacted a child?

“Organisations must minimise the length of time for which any priority illegal content is present”

‘Minimise’ seems very vague. What does it mean in concrete terms?

(Summarised) Networks failing to comply will face penalties of up to £18 million, or 10% of annual global turnover.

Good. But will this end in a stream of lengthy litigation that the large tech companies will easily be able to afford?
In the section Children’s risk assessment, with regard to harmful content:
“giving separate consideration to children in different age groups, and taking into account (in particular) algorithms used by the service”

There is no concrete guidance about what is harmful to children according to age groups.

Ofcom is in charge of enforcing the new provisions. Its approach to implementing the Online Safety Act is here.(18) However it doesn’t specify how age assurance will be done when it comes to accessing inappropriate content, or make any mention of addiction, dopamine or concentration spans.

And how and when will Ofcom decide what ages are appropriate for what content? And how will it decide what content is manipulation, what is harmful and what is educational - especially when it comes to heated or politicised areas of disagreement in wider society?

Regardless, add artificial intelligence (AI) into the mix and much of what can be controlled today may not be controllable tomorrow. Children are already using AI image generators to make indecent images of other children.(19)

Regarding age assurance, we would again argue that a tech solution to a tech problem often has a tech workaround, as with VPNs mentioned above. Not to mention the near boundless possibilities of AI, currently in its infancy.

Legislative powers may be catching up, but how many more suicides will we have before it does, fully?

The solution is simple

Don’t give our children smartphones until they are at least 16. Parents who want to keep in touch with their children can give them ‘dumb phones’ or watches that enable calls and texts, some of which have geo-location.

Get them off screens and much else will naturally fall into place. According to psychology professor Jonathan Haidt, “Allowing more unsupervised free play is among the most powerful and least expensive ways to bring down rates of mental illness.”(20)

Meanwhile, all the educational benefits of the internet are available from a laptop or tablet in school or at home, which has content controls and is in full view of the adults in the room.

Let’s stop this scandal now. Let them be bored, let them play, let them be children.

——————-

1 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1326211/children-owning-mobile-phone-by-age-uk/

2 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/dec/05/they-see-it-in-corridors-in-bathrooms-on-the-bus-uk-schools-porn-crisis

3 A lot of it is actually just abuse - Young people and Pornography (January 2023)
https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2023/02/cc-a-lot-of-it-is-actually-just-abuse-young-people-and-pornography-updated.pdf

4 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/10/children-now-biggest-perpetrators-of-sexual-abuse-against-children

5 https://www.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/news-opinion/2023/2023-08-14-82-rise-in-online-grooming-crimes-against-children-in-the-last-5-years/

6 https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/255852/childrens-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2023.pdf

7 https://www.ft.com/content/0e2f6f8e-bb03-4fa7-8864-f48f576167d2

8 Source FT analysis of CDC Wonder (US) and 21st Century Mortality filess (UK)

9 https://sapienlabs.org/whats_new/study-out-from-sapien-labs-links-age-of-first-smartphone-to-mental-wellbeing/

10 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/25/kids-addicted-social-media-congress-meta-tiktok-snap